Valista CEO Kevin McGrath steps down upon acquisition
Aepona made the decision to acquire Valista to meet operators' demands for open SDP platforms that include the settlement and monetisation piece in a single solution.
Michael Crossey, CMO of service delivery platform provider Aepona, told Mobile Europe that the acquisition was made in response to operators demanding SDPs that open up access to network assets, and have the ability to carry out the payment and settlement to third party partners and providers.
"We have been talking since January about how to increase our partnerships, and we have seen RFIs from operators that have called for a need to include both elements," Crossey said. "We were aware that we were lacking the settlement part in our suite for the Network As A Service concept. As operators open up their assets to third party developers, they were clear that they were lacking the monetisation piece as well. And this was something we didn't have in our platform – the mediation and settlement part,"
Although Aepona does offer the ability to expose APIs into into operators' rating and charging functions, it didn't have the back-end settlement capability, Crossey said. "As operators expose their network assets, so they will deal with more third party partners and developers, and the more the valkue chain increases – meaning the settlement process becomes more complicated. Valista streamlines that process," he said.
Crossey said that the acquisition would give the combined company revenues of around $25-30 million, with about 200 people on the staff. 120 would come over from Aepona and 80 from Valista. Valista's CTO Fran Heeran and Declan McMahon, Senior Vice President, Services, would both be part of the new company, with Heeran reporting to Aepona CTO Richard McConnell. CEO Kevin McGrath has stepped aside and has no role in the new company.
Aiding the merger was the fact that the two companies shared VC investors in Trinity Venture Capital and Amadeus. Crossey added that both companies had been "doing well" in the past year – especially in North America.